Statement of Purpose
The Gender in Civic Leadership Archive is a digital knowledge platform documenting the lived experiences, governance practices, and relational labour of women and non-binary folx serving in local leadership roles. Founded and directed by Dr. Jacquetta Newman and Dr. Shawna Lewkowitz at King’s University-College at Western, the Archive brings together student-led qualitative interviews with women leaders across municipal government, nonprofit organizations, labour councils, arts institutions, and community-based initiatives.
It is designed as a public-facing resource. It provides accessible case studies that contribute to broader conversations about gender, governance, and civic participation. Community leaders featured in the Archive retain agency over their representation and participate voluntarily.
Supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (SSHRC) SIG Grant and the King’s University-College Research Office, the Archive operates at the intersection of feminist and queer political analysis, social justice, civic engagement, and research-integrated teaching. It documents how women and gender-diverse people navigate authority, accountability, emotional labour, and work–family negotiation within the structures of local governance.
The Archive advances knowledge mobilization by translating feminist political theory into grounded, place-based analysis. It highlights how leadership is practiced, negotiated, and sustained within local institutions — often through forms of labour that remain undervalued or invisible.
Our Goals
Women and gender-diverse people’s leadership is often examined through national politics or corporate management. The Gender in Civic Leadership Archive instead centers local governance; the institutional spaces where policies are implemented, communities are coordinated, and social infrastructure is sustained.
The Archive is grounded in feminist political economy, feminist geography, and gender and leadership scholarship. It examines themes including:
- Emotional labour in public roles
- Gendered accountability norms
- Social reproduction and domestic labour
- Communication and leadership styles
- Intersectionality and access to authority
- Care, resilience, and institutional maintenance
- Geography and space
Experiential Learning and Research-Integrated Teaching
The Archive is produced through advanced undergraduate coursework in political science and social justice and peace studies. Students receive training in feminist methodology, qualitative interviewing, ethical research practice, and analytic writing. Interviews are conducted with consent and are edited for clarity, analytical depth, and public accessibility.
Through in-depth, semi-structured interviews, student researchers document not only formal leadership responsibilities but also the invisible and relational labour that sustains civic institutions.
By embedding student research within a curated, longitudinal platform, the Archive builds cumulative knowledge across annual cohorts while supporting experiential learning.
Our Purpose
The Archive therefore serves two purposes:
1
It documents women and gender diverse people’s civic leadership as a site of scholarly inquiry.
2
It functions as a model of research-integrated teaching and community-engaged scholarship.
Ongoing Development
The Archive is an evolving, longitudinal project. Each year, new interviews expand its thematic and sectoral scope. Over time, it aims to build a comprehensive record of women’s leadership practices within local governance contexts.
By documenting lived leadership experience across time, the Archive contributes to ongoing research in gender and governance, social reproduction, resilience, and civic institutions.